Pelosi empowered by GOP dissension

John Boehner once again turned to Nancy Pelosi to deliver votes to avert Congress from diving into a disaster.

On Tuesday, 182 Democrats joined just 75 Republicans to pass a long-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, ending a months-long fight over immigration that President Barack Obama sparked just after Election Day.

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Since Friday, Pelosi and Boehner have held quiet rounds of negotiations and maneuvering to push the measure through the House over the objections of a cadre of conservatives in Boehner’s conference who scuttled a three-week funding bill in a dramatic showdown last week.

As late as Tuesday, Boehner tapped Democrats to help pass a procedural rule for a funding bill for Amtrak that Republicans were threatening to bring down if it did not include a provision that would stop a clean DHS bill from moving forward. But Pelosi pledged Democratic support to move forward — a departure from normal where the minority party always votes against rules brought by the party controlling the floor.

The California Democrat went to her caucus meeting asking members to support the rule, by coming “right to the floor and get up on that board, so that we can end this thing.”

That last-minute move comes after days of Democrats maneuvering to push the House to bring up a clean bill.

Vital to those talks were Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee; Nita Lowey, the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee; and Lucille Roybal-Allard, the top Democrat on a Homeland Security Subcommittee.

“It was very important for us members to stick together to give us the leverage … to have a vote today, which was a very, very strong message … to our enemies, to the American people, and to the workers in Homeland Security that we are there to keep the American people safe,” Pelosi said at a press conference shortly after the vote.

The vote Tuesday is just the latest chapter in a long-running saga between Democrat and Boehner. The Ohio Republican is often forced to turn to Pelosi to deliver votes when legislation, like government spending bills and increases to the debt limit, fail to garner enough support from Republicans.

That gives Pelosi, who has watched her caucus sink into the deepest minority Democrats have experienced in decades, an unusually powerful hand in times of crisis.

When Boehner initially tried to propose a three-week extension of the Department of Homeland Security’s funding, Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer urged Democrats to reject the bill — and to hold out voting until Republicans were on the record with their votes.

The tactic worked. Pelosi lost only a dozen Democrats and Boehner was forced to pass a week-long bill only hours before deadline to avert a shutdown. Right after the vote on Friday, Pelosi met with senior Democratic leaders to plot a way forward.

That included a 7 p.m. phone call with Boehner in which the two debated using a little-known procedure called Rule 22 to allow a vote on a long-term funding bill for DHS that was clean of any policy riders. That maneuver, which was ultimately used to pass the DHS bill on Tuesday, allowed House lawmakers to reverse an earlier vote against a clean bill, after the House and Senate were unable to forge an agreement to enter conference negotiations before DHS funding expires.

It was Monday at 5:30 p.m. when Pelosi and Boehner agreed that it was “best to take up the matter on Tuesday immediately after [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s address in order to deal with the matter as quickly as possible upon return of the Senate papers,” according to an aide familiar with the conversations.